Small Stuff #9: May I see your passport please?

US Passport 4x

US Passport 10x

US Passport 40x

US Passport 40x+

These are some of my favorite Small Stuff pictures so far. Passports are one of the few instances of really quality print today. While much of bureaucracy is trending towards the electronic, and thankfully so, passports remain an application of delicate print, where the delicacy is used as a security measure. This is my old passport, pre-RFID, so the design has changed. But you can see the important of the grain of the paper, as well as an overlay of litho inks done in precise colors. A color copy of a passport, done on even the best quality digital equipment, would be instantly recognizable on simple magnification. To create a decent forgery, one would have to have the exact plates, ink, and paper used in the official version, and even then I am sure there are other techniques and indicators in the print process I don’t know that would let an expert tell the different.